Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Sitakant mahapatra on The Coloured Yolk of Love

Radha-Krishna Love:

Vrindavan: The
Coloured Yolk of Love

Sitakant Mahapatra

Gopikrishnan Kottor is already a known
voice in modern Indian Poetry in English. Vrindavan, I find, have won very
favourable notice in literary journals, poets and critics. In his hands the
eternal love between Radha (by legend his maternal auntie) and Krishna acquires a new dimension. The poet quotes very
appropriately Chandidas:

“The essence of beauty springs from the eternal play of
man as Krishna and woman as Radha.”

Man as Purusa and woman as Prakriti is
well-celebrated in our philosophy. Krishna is
the Blue God, who spent his childhood with cowherd boys in Gopapur not far from
‘Barsana’ where Radha was born. The poet, in his brief preface, describes the
landscape of Brajadham and its various institutions and temples including the
associated legends. Widows flock to Vrindavan seeking redemption in Krishna’s love.

The series of 214 poems begin with The
Arrival and ends with The Departure. Radha’s love for Krishna
is a sweet mix of erotic passion, intense desires, solicitations and spiritual
ecstasy. Love is divinized. The blue eye of peacock tail is symbolic of the
Blue God, his dark cloud-colour, the peacock feather decorating his head and
his yellow garments. Jayadev, the celebrated Sanskrit Poet of Gitagovinda
speaks of him as Pitabasan Banamali.
Jayadev delineates Radha Krishna’s numerous dalliance on the Yamuna bank, in
plain, explicitly erotic and evocative lines; the rasleela on its bank (along with sixteen thousand gopis). Kottoor
may have been inspired by that epic.

Kottoor in the Latin ‘Pavonina’ with
which he begins gives what all the reader is going to meet throughout the book.

Drops of rain

play upon me

the stops of your flute;

Impassionate the wind

swivels in me ecstasy

as upon

a wet plantain leaf;

Running all over Vrindavan

bruised,

tethered to you.

Late Niranjan Mohanty’s Krishna was on
a slightly different pitch. It was not so detailed nor so long in describing
their intense intimacy. Here the poet goes to even very small details. The
procession of events include ‘early spring in Vrindavan’ Kamdev’s plight, mango
season, golden willow, Jasmines et al.
Radha is ‘filled up’ emotionally and physically. The body and soul could never
be seen in isolation.

In Max Muller Bhavan Lothar Lutze once
recited, both in English and German, two poems of mine and two poems of Agyeya
on the Krishna theme, since brought out in a
volume titled Living Literature.
Kottoor, no doubt, operates in a different plane.

The ‘story’ is well told with
competence. More power to Kottoor’s elbow.